OT - way off the subject ...

Cellphones can take okay pictures and if you are happy with the result, that’s all you need. My first real camera was a Nikon FM SLR shooting low ASA relatively fine grain film; after that experience it’s difficult to be happy with the snapshots produced by my iPhone. IMO a dedicated camera with a real lens can take better pictures. All of my dedicated cameras have shutter priority, aperture priority and manual modes which cell phone cameras don’t have; they’re pretty good for auto-only cameras with smallish lenses, but those attributes are also limitations. I use my cell phone to take pictures of labels and things to jog my memory, not because it takes great pictures.

Comparison in general: My small camera has an 18MP 1/2.3 inch (7.82 mm) Exmor R® CMOS sensor and a 30X zoom lens with pretty good Zeiss glass that can really reach out; the full frame camera has a 24MP CMOS sensor with whichever lens I have that seems most appropriate. Most cell phones these days have a 12MP (max) CMOS sensor behind a sophisticated but smallish (tiny) lens. Lens size does matter as it translates to the volume of light allowed to hit the sensor.

I used the smaller camera to take a few pictures of the moon at mid-day yesterday and I watched as it focused on the moon -- the resultant picture showed detail in the moon surface, this was a daytime photo with a blue sky foreground. I need to get into the manual to see how to focus on the moon (infinity) while shooting through objects much closer (trees). The camera wants to focus on the nearer trees in auto leaving the moon out of focus, so I need to learn the manual mode inputs. My cell phone won’t zoom out far enough to show more than a large white dot, but I do like how you can use the touch screen to direct the object on which to focus. That said, the 720mm (full frame equiv) lens can really reach out. Relatively new camera to me though, still learning...

The full frame size camera has the potential to take much better pictures but that comes at a price. One price is the price-tag -- not cheap; the second price is size and weight, not small, not light -- relatively speaking it’s big and heavy. So I use the smaller camera more, light and easy to carry, and takes good pics.

Like I said, way OT.